In certain disaster or disease situations, it is often necessary to immediately provide emergency care prior to the patient being decontaminated or properly accessed whether the patient has a highly contagious disease or has been subjected to a biological agent. For example, in a situation such as a hazardous chemical spill or the deliberate or accidental release of lethal toxins, diseases, or other a biological contaminants (hereinafter referred to generally as a biohazards), patients in and of themselves may represent a danger, especially to first responders providing medical and rescue assistance. In addition, transportation of these victims to local hospitals and medical facilities are often required to save the life of the victims but, doing so without taking precautions will result in contaminating all environments that the patient comes in contact. This often includes the ambulance or transportation vehicle to the medical facility, the medical facility itself and any other area or staging area in the interim. The patient may also contaminate other victims resulting in many ambulances being contaminated, many medical facilities becoming contaminated as well as many medical personnel. The problem is only intensified in the state of a national disaster.
Most rescuers have a procedure in place to safeguard the ambulance, holding area or hospital, as best they can, from becoming contaminated by a patient exposed to a biohazard. Such procedures include, but are not limited to, covering the inside of the ambulance with tarps or protective sheets that can be easily disposed of once the patient disembarks. However, since the ambulance is usually limited in space with many drawers, cabinets and closets holding drugs, bandages and other medical equipment, this minimal protective coating is often breached during the transportation of the patent to the medical facility. In addition, once the contaminated patient is removed form the ambulance, unless the same or similar procedures that were taken to protect the ambulance form being contaminated is taken to protect the medical facility, i.e. drape protective sheets on the walls, floors, ceilings, equipment and doors, then contamination of the facility is likely to occur. Even if these procedures are taken and are preserved during transport and treatment, depending on the type of biohazard contamination, the protective measures may not be enough to protect contamination of these areas.
For example, these measures may be sufficient to protect against mild chemical contamination but not radiological and/or biological toxins and/or diseases. Moreover, even if they were sufficient, decontaminating the protective site is costly, time intensive and often not able to be done without contaminating the site being decontaminated. Even if all contaminated protective materials are collected and the site is left uncontaminated, the task still remains to discard these materials without contaminating disposal facilities and non-medical personnel.
Accordingly, there is a need in the market today for a bio-hazardous containment unit that can be easily deployed, allows access to the patient so that medical assistance can be provided, is effective in protecting against contamination of people and areas that come in contact with the contaminated patient, requires little to no decontamination after it is deployed and requires minimal resources and efforts to dispose of once it is no longer needed. The contamination detainment unit described herein satisfies this market need. The present invention is further described in the sections and figures set forth below.